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Below the palace, the dungeon is muffled and sound-proofed. Most of the cells lining the corridor are empty, prisoners long since departed to the Isle. Only one is occupied. Beast’s footsteps echo oddly in the enclosed space as he approaches.
She looks up as he stops before her cell, the bars separating them. With her magic restrained, there’s nothing to hide her true form. Her green eyes are unreadable, her pale exquisite face inhuman in its beauty.
“Enchantress,” he says finally.
She nods politely. “Beast.”
“It’s been a long time,” Beast says when she fails to speak further. Somehow he’d expected more defiance and seething hostility, not this calm acknowledgement as if they’d met at a dinner party.
“It has,” she agrees.
“You’ll be taken to the Isle in the morning.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Her serenity grates at him. “Is there anything you’d like to say to me before then?” He says tightly.
Her head tilts, with seemingly genuine curiosity. “Like what?”
“A reason, perhaps, for what you did to me.”
“I told you my reasons at the time.”
“I was a child.” His anger finally finds voice. “A rude, ignorant, selfish brat. But a child. And you destroyed me.”
“Not from where I’m sitting. You seem to have come off the better from our dealings. You have a lovely wife, a throne, a newborn son…”
“Don’t speak of him. Don’t even say his name.”
“As you will.”
The Enchantress sits quietly, unaffected, and Beast has the feeling that she’s getting the better of this conversation. He should have listened to Belle and not come.
“What gave you the right to decide that?” He says finally. “Answer me that, if nothing else. What gave you the right to take my life into your hands?”
A pause. “A foretelling,” she says at last. “An oracle told me you would build a shining kingdom built on the suffering of innocents. I sought to prevent it.”
Beast’s breath catches. He doesn’t want to believe her – every part of him rages against believing a word out of her mouth – but the truth is, it’s not entirely implausible. He doesn’t like to think who he’d been if he’d continued on the path he was as a child, if he’d never met Belle or learned to see the world from the perspective of an outsider.
Staring into that steady green gaze, he tells himself it's just lies. Her trying to get into his head. “Trying to make yourself the noble fairy? Really?”
“Believe me or don’t. I did what I thought best for you.”
“Best for me?” He laughs, the sound ringing bitter in his throat. “I’d hate to see your worst.”
“Yes, on that you are quite correct. I made the wrong choice in handling it. I am truly sorry.” She sounds it too, resigned and sorrowing.
It’s what Beast wanted to hear. An apology. An admission of defeat. Yet he doesn’t feel any better for hearing it. Perhaps because he doesn’t like the idea that he might have reason to be grateful to her. That her cruelty might have been necessary to save him from himself.
He desperately tries to identify the loose thread that will unravel her lies, and finally hits upon something. “Why did the oracle tell you my future?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oracles are specific. You have to ask them what you want to know before they’ll answer.” He teases out the logic slowly, certain that he’s right by the way her expression closes off. “Why did you ask her about my future?”
Her face is unreadable now. “Beast. You won. Take peace in that.”
“No.” He leans closer to the bars until the protective spells hum in warning. “I want to know why you asked about my future. What did I do to earn your attention?”
“You won’t like the answer. It will bring you nothing but pain.”
“I don’t care. Tell me.”
Her green gaze burns into him until finally she sighs, looking away. “You did nothing, Beast, except be born.”
It’s not an answer. “Because I was a prince,” he guesses.
“No.”
“Because my father had wronged you.”
“No. Or, at least no more than a man ever wrongs a woman.” She says it with a quiet fondness and Beast stares at her in revolted realisation.
“You were in love with my father.”
“And he me. Or so he said, at the time.”
“And then he rejected you to marry my mother. I see now."
She shakes her head. “Beast,” she says softly. “Didn’t you ever wonder why he threw away all the paintings of your mother when you were seven? Why he forbade anyone to speak of her?”
“Because – ”
“Because I left,” she says ever so gently. “And he never forgave me for leaving.”
Beast takes a step back from the cage. Then another. And another. Backing away from the woman who stares at him so intently, an alien softness in the curve of her mouth.
“You’re lying,” he says through a dry mouth. “My mother is dead.”
“Metaphorically, yes. Literally, no. My son –”
“You are not my mother!”
Except he can see it now. Not in his own face – he’s entirely his father’s son, always has been – but upstairs on the boy sleeping peacefully in his crib is the unmistakeable stamp of the features of the woman in this cell. And now that Beast has seen it, he can never un-see it.
“I told you,” she says softly. “It would bring you nothing but pain.”
He can’t bear to look at her, can’t stand to see his son’s eyes in her face. “Say that you are,” he says. “How could you curse your own child based on a single prophecy?”
“I didn’t intend to. I thought I would observe you, see what kind of person you were turning out to be. I thought surely a child cannot be evil already. There must be time to shape him into a good man.” A pause. “I hoped very hard.”
“You judged me based on a single test.”
“I watched you for months. There were many tests. I loved your father, but he thoroughly ruined you.”
Beast tries to remember – but the fact is, he’d been such an awful brat, he could have dealt out any number of selfish little abuses and not possibly be able to remember every single one. Had it been throwing an apple at that stray dog? Or overturning that table of food because he didn’t get precisely the flavour filling he wanted? Or perhaps laughing at the little girl crying over being splashed by the carriage. Which sin had convinced his own… convinced her that he was irredeemable?
“You should have taken me away,” he spits, surprising them both. “Why didn't you take me away if Father was doing such a terrible job?”
The Enchantress recovers first. “And raise you as a fay? I’d rather inflict a bad human king on the world than a cruel fay with the powers of the forbidden at his fingertips. I wanted to fix my mistake, not compound it.”
“Then why not come back? You are a sorceress. Father couldn’t have stopped you from resuming your place at his side.”
“You underestimate him. He knew me very well and he was very resourceful. And he was not a… forgiving man.”
No, he wasn’t. And it’s that small detail that removes the last of Beast’s doubts. She’d known his father. Gods, she was his… he was her…And she’d done that to him in her sick version of tough love.
“Congratulations,” he says finally. “You succeeded.”
She tilts her head oddly. “Did I?” She says softly.
“Yes. I changed. You made me a better man, at the expense of any relationship with your son or grandson.”
He turns his back on the woman who wears his mother’s face and walks away. When he’s almost at the exit, she calls out after him:
“A shining kingdom built on the suffering of innocents.” Against his better judgement, he looks back. Her eyes seem to glow in the gloom and despite having the form of a beautiful woman, there’s nothing human about her now. “It’s too late now. I should have killed you while you were a child, before you became this.”
A shiver passes down Beast’s spine. She's insane, he assures himself. Probably went right round the bend trying to justify what she'd done to her son.
“You’ll go to the Isle with the rest of your wretched kind,” he tells her roughly. “If you’re wise, you’ll keep our connection to yourself.”
She nods indifferently. “A fitting punishment for my failures. Truly you are my son.”